by Christa Wick
I froze as I finally recognized the scent. Eyes sliding in the direction from which the wind blew, my gaze locked on a large flat rock in the middle of the creek where Joshua Reeves was sunning himself.
My eyes kind of bent down and gut punched me. There wasn’t a stitch of clothing on his muscular body. Sunlight bounced off his skin. Spray from the water glittered along his supple flesh like diamonds.
#ShakeItOff
I had seen him shirtless before, working on his bike outside the club. Out of heat, it was easy to look away, to remind myself he was a cat, an interfering one at that.
He was more than shirtless on that rock and I was far from being out of heat. I ordered my legs to turn the rest of me around. Their muscles were too busy clenching to obey. I ordered my eyelids to shut and my nostrils to close with the hope that if I breathed through my mouth I wouldn’t be able to taste him.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
#DontGoThere
Not a part of me would listen to the commands my brain fired off. My nose kept sniffing. My eyes widened and explored, crawling over the perfectly sculpted chest with its golden brown skin, riding each peak and valley of the washboard abs, tonguing the nearest line of the V that started at the top of his hips and narrowed down to—
Narrowed down to—
My shoulders and hips twitched. My clit danced with contractions that ran deeply through my sex. The muscles on the inside of my body sensuously curled against one another.
Damn it, why did he have to smell like fresh-baked Heaven? Was it from the sun heating his skin? The delicate floral layer surrounding him?
If I could have just stopped smelling him, I could have looked away.
Please, please, please let me stop smelling him.
Just like that, the breeze changed direction.
My gaze didn’t. I still had a mesmerizing snout full of Joshua Reeves that I was afraid to snort out in case he heard me.
Feeling the warm push of cream from my pussy, my eyes closed in pleasure.
They snapped open a second later as the wind started to blow from behind me. I looked at the rock where Reeves sunned. He had rolled onto his stomach. His blue gaze locked on me like some kind of missile guidance system. There was one flashing second in which the eyes were human, then he shifted to his alpha state.
A big cat snarl ripped through the air.
I blinked, all the arousal gone from my body. Terror penetrated every nerve ending, every soft tissue, every bone.
A pride of lions had killed my mother and father. They had tried to kill me and Braeden, too, but our parents fought them off long enough for us to get away. The only things I could associate with his snarl were death and the terror of being hunted as a child.
I blinked again, the tears welling along my bottom eyelids finally falling to splash against my cheeks. The release unlocked my muscles. Dropping the basket, I turned and fled. My plump legs pumped as fast as they could as my body refused to shift to its wolf state.
For five minutes, I ran all out. My ears strained for the crash of Joshua’s mountain lion or his hybrid alpha state through the woods. Even though I heard nothing, I couldn’t stop running. Even if he didn’t plan on ripping me to shreds, I never wanted to see him again, especially while I was in heat.
I was jumping in my Jeep and getting the hell out of there!
Running from the tree line that bordered Holly’s cabin, I headed straight for the Jeep, my legs finding a fresh burst of speed. I rounded the front corner of the house, the gravel drive lurching into view.
My legs kept pumping while my mind screamed STOP!
Reeves stood next to the driver side door. He was sliding into his jeans, his hands near his hips and the button fly flap completely open, his golden shaft thick, erect and intimidating.
#CantFocus
I had to get away but the damn cat was guarding my Jeep and my key ring was in the cabin. Executing a sudden change in direction, I started a face plant. I stumbled, legs tangling around one another. My attention was stuck on the front door of the house, not my traitorous limbs. I needed to get inside, lock the door, shut the windows and barricade myself inside until he left.
A big hand wrapped around my elbow. We tripped together. I went down first, his implacable grip bringing him with me. My shoulders and ass slammed onto the paved gravel drive. Reeves landed on top of me, his bare chest covered with a light sheen of sweat he had worked up beating me back to the cabin.
The blue eyes, human once more, drilled into mine.
“I didn’t know you were here!” I blurted.
What the fuck? Why was I apologizing?
I should be telling him off!
My lips parted—and betrayed me a second time.
“No one was supposed to be here. I just got there when you scented me. I didn’t even see any—”
“Baby, you’re lying.”
I tried to burrow into the ground beneath me at the accusation. He had no right to call me a liar! And what was that sound coming out of his throat?
Was the jerk purring at me?
Like actual PURRING purring?
Shit, he was. What kind of ninja Jedi mind fuck trick was that?
“Lying,” he repeated, his smirk showing a hint of fang.
“I had just walked up!”
That was my story. No way in hell would I admit to my involuntary ogling of his body, to the way my mouth had filled with drool or how a fountain of heat had built between my thighs.
“So,” Reeves started, the full-throated purr still vibrating in his broad chest. “First glimpse of a naked man and your pussy floods? I know you're in heat, but—”
I stopped that foul tongue of his with a hard two-handed shove at his shoulders.
“Yeah, first glimpse,” I growled. “Before I saw it was a cat.”
Reeves dipped his head, the purr muted as he slowly inhaled. Meeting my gaze, he tried to mesmerize me with a slow blink that almost worked.
“But it’s still wet,” he rumbled, his lips against my ear. “So wet its taste is coating my tongue. It’s a thick cream, I bet.”
I vibrated at the words, my response shocking me into fresh action. I shoved at him again, my heels digging at the gravel-covered ground for purchase so I could push upward with my hips and buck him off me.
“Get away, I don't do cats!”
“You don't do anyone,” he chuckled, using his weight to effortlessly hold me down. His nose skimmed my neck, brushed through my hair and around my cheek as he scented me. “You've always kept this soft, lovely body all to yourself, hiding yourself away during heat.”
I opened my mouth, my retort doused with a warning snarl that sent a chill through me.
“Don't think the Woodsmen can’t smell it all over Braeden's clothes when it happens. And don’t think I can’t see through your talk.”
I tried to process what he was saying, the words as slippery as the tanned skin made slick from the chase.
Had he said my body was lovely?
Why would he say that?
Duh! Male shifter around a female in heat.
#BullshitGonnaFlow
It surprised me—how much it hurt to hear him say that knowing it was only because I was in heat. Didn’t matter how much I disliked Reeves or how, cat or not, he was never going to be my type. It hurt, damn it.
I glared at him, my throat and top lip vibrating with a snarl of my own.
“Get off me and leave this property!”
The damn cat shook his head, the smirk on his face almost as big as his ego.
“I have permission from the president of the Woodsmen to be here.”
“Hah!” My head bobbed up toward his in victory, even if I was still pinned beneath his unrelenting weight. “I have permission from the actual owner!”
“You mean the mate of the actual owner,” he corrected and threw me a wink.
That smug smile of his flashed so bright I wanted to shatter his teeth and scratch his eyes out.
I stared at Reeves, mouth clamped shut, chest heaving in fury and half caught breaths until I could form whole words again.
“It’s your dumb ass that’s leaving. The house needs painted.”
“Not happening, catnip.” His teeth lightly snapped near the tip of my nose.
I really couldn’t breathe. My vision blurred. My face felt on fire.
He had me so mad!
I thrashed, intent on getting out from under the mass of muscles and smooth skin.
Reeves didn’t try to stop me. But his sly hands made a game of letting me go, the fingertips grazing the side of my hip, my calf, and along my thigh as I crawled out from under him.
The last thing he did was catch a thick rope of my hair, sniffing at it right before I twisted completely free and ran for the cabin.
I crashed through the door, slammed it then threw my weight against it while I turned the two locks. Then I raced from window to window, tripping in between in my haste to shut and lock them, pulling the curtains together so he couldn’t see me through the glass.
Before I could even finish locking myself in, I could hear Reeves working on the barn. Half an hour later, I worked up the nerve to peek through the curtains. There he was, on the roof, hammering away, shirtless in the sun.
Not a care in the world.
Like I didn’t even exist.
Chapter 5
Clover
For three hours, I scrubbed the house top to bottom, growling and gnashing out everything I should have said to Reeves. I beat the dust out of the couch cushions pretending they were his smug face. I whipped lint from towels as I took them out of the dryer, the sharp smack made more satisfying when I added an image each time of me whacking him upside his dense head.
Outside, Reeves went about his work in a casual but persistent manner, the constant hammering as he repaired the barn taking up residence in my skull and inflicting the closest thing I had ever experienced to a headache other than when I’d been shot and poisoned.
Growling at the incessant pounding, I carried a gallon can of primer to the sink and popped the lid. I could see him through the window, shirtless still, his muscles fluid as he swung the stupid hammer. With an alpha shifter’s regenerative powers, he could keep at it all day and most of the night.
One of a number of things an alpha could go at all day and most of the night.
#HelpfulNotHelpful
It was going to drive me crazy—the noise, knowing he was nearby, sweat dotting his golden brown skin, its beads gathering to run down his chest and back. Everything all gold and glistening.
“Not my type,” I told the empty room.
Even if he had been, I knew I wasn’t his type. Not once had he shown the slightest interest in me.
“Fine by me,” I growled, whipping the primer around with the stir stick as I stared out the window. “More than fine by me.”
He was a cat. No way could I be with a cat. That snarl at the creek had nearly made me piss myself with fear. Didn’t matter if the sound wasn’t the same as the pride of lions that had murdered my parents. It was still the sound of a big cat, one with two-inch fangs and curving claws every bit as long.
I had heard a snarl like that as my mom lost half her face in one swipe. I had heard it again as the pride alpha reached into my father’s chest and removed his heart. I never, never, never wanted to hear it again.
Even if a bunch of lions hadn’t killed my parents and tried to kill me and my brother, I would still hate cats because of that crazy ass Landa Judd. She hadn’t just been violent against me and Paisley—she had tried to sell out the entire Night Falls pack to the prides in Illinois.
Traitorous, insane, violent, self-absorbed… cats sucked gopher balls.
Didn’t matter what they looked like spread out naked on a rock in the sunshine.
Joshua Reeves was a no-good-gopher-ball-sucking-never-gave-a-damn-before jerk who could kiss my—
A slimy cold covered my hand. I jerked it away from my body, white primer splattering against the cupboard and on the counter before dripping off the end of the stir stick to color the floor.
“Fuck!”
My hand had slid too far down the stick while stirring the primer. Now I had a huge mess to clean up. Yet another thing I could blame on cats, especially the ultra annoying one up on the roof of Holly Ulster’s barn.
Seriously? Did he need to have his shirt off while doing that? I was inside, furnace running, a hoodie on over my t-shirt. It wasn’t like he was working in July or August.
He was going around topless just to screw with my head because he knew I was in heat. He probably thought I was inside drooling over him, thinking about everything I had seen at the creek and that tree branch I had felt pressed against me out in the drive.
Fuming, I wiped the primer off the counter and floor then smoothed out the streaks and dots on the cupboards that I would be priming later anyway. Returning to the sink, I rinsed out the paint rag, my gaze slitted as I stared for a few scheming seconds at Reeves on the roof.
I had seen his behavior a hundred times for myself—the cat liked toying with people, batting them around like a half-dead mouse. Nothing he said or did could be trusted. Out on that roof, he appeared impervious to the fact I was hiding my heat behind a locked door and windows.
Maybe he was indifferent, maybe he wasn’t.
He had let drop words about my having a soft, lovely body. Maybe that was his opinion, maybe it wasn’t.
I didn’t care beyond the fact that he was making a game of me. Only, this time, he wasn’t dealing with a mouse. He was dealing with a wolf. And what I lacked in alpha-ness, I made up for in deviousness.
I could out cat the cat in that department any day of the week.
The flat, angry line that had cleaved my face began to slide upward in a smile. Standing on my tiptoes, I leaned over the sink and cracked the kitchen window. Taking the can of primer into the main living area, I opened the windows in there, too.
Humming an old camp song about a man with a pain-in-the-ass cat he kept trying to get rid of, I pushed the furniture into the center of the room, then put down a floor pad in one corner and started to paint.
The hammer continued its mocking rhythm.
Was he replacing every damn board on the building?
Building new stalls?
Seriously, what the fuck?
Finished with the walls in the living room, I stomped into what had been Paisley’s bedroom before she went away to college. I stripped the bedding and dumped it in the washer, starting the load then going into the kitchen for a drink.
The hammering had stopped.
I looked around, gaze narrowing as I searched for the cat. I hadn’t heard the bike drive off, didn’t even know where it was parked.
I knew Braeden had purchased all the supplies for fixing the structure before the wedding when the local lumber yard had run a big sale. He’d had Rooster and Clark haul it up in their truck and stick it inside the barn. Maybe that’s where the bike was.
But where was Reeves?
Suddenly feeling exposed, I moved so no one looking through the window could see me. Closing my eyes, I listened for any hint that the big cat was creeping around the house, sniffing at my scent wafting through the windows.
Drawing a slow, deep breath, all I got was a snout full of chemicals from the primer.
And the smell of my own heat.
Yanking a cupboard door open, I pulled down a glass and poured myself some cold water from the tap. The cocky jerk was probably back at the creek, sunning himself—maybe even naked again.
Growling, I returned to working, consolidating the furniture in the master bedroom and covering it with plastic sheeting, then putting a coat of primer on the walls. An hour later, I took the roller and its tray into the
kitchen, away from the fumes.
Putting the tray aside, I sat on the floor, stretching my leg and back muscles.
At some point during the last hour of exertion, I had stopped cursing Reeves and was silently railing against my body.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Two heats barely six weeks apart?
I had never heard of such a thing, but I didn’t really talk to the other female shifters in the pack. There weren’t that many. Most of the women were all either a decade older or a decade younger, except for Onyx.
The she-wolf and I were definitely chummy. As grammatically impossible as it was, I finally had two best friends. But Onyx wasn’t exactly one hundred percent shifter. She’d been hit by a vehicle as a child and received a massive blood infusion of human blood. That had thrown everything out of whack—delaying her first heat by at least eight years and suppressing her alpha state for just as long.
I chewed over the beautiful anomaly that was Onyx Murphy. Was it the human blood or the massive trauma that had affected her as a shifter? I hadn’t received an infusion when Landa shot me, but datura had poisoned my blood. And the wound and poison sure as hell had been traumatic.
Could the second heat be a side effect of that?
Straining to touch my toes, I froze at the sound of footsteps on the porch. My pulse kicked up at the first creak of the boards. The door was locked, but most of the windows were open, the screens on them easy to pop out.
The key Paisley had given me wasn’t the only one.
Had Braeden given Reeves a key?
A tremor running through me, I waited for the sound of the door knob turning or the slide of a key in the lock. The footsteps sounded again, this time fading. A minute later, the hammering resumed as the smell of meadow flowers softly filtered through the screens on the windows and the stink of primer.
I low crawled toward the living room, my body brushing against the bottom cupboards in my attempt to stay out of view of Reeves if he was back up on the barn’s roof. Without leaving the kitchen, I peeked around the corner to see that the same basket I had carried to the creek was on the porch. Phlox and iris and fragrant spring leaves filled it to the point of overflowing.